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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Since it was an "homage," everyone was happy and everyone got a ratings bump. Some dialogue:

Craig: Can't stop thinking about that French Dude...he's dreamy.

Later, during tweets and emails:

Craig: You're a charming bastard, aren't you? You charming bastard. You just charmed me. I'm not even gay and I'd do you.
Geoff, the robot: Is that code?
Craig: Nope, that's right on the nose, Geoff. I was tellin' it like it is.

Craig: You ever met any Irish dudes? I wouldn't want to be married to one. They're handy in a bar fight but...If you were gay, would you marry a dude?
Arthur: Not yet...
Craig: I think the French press are going to enjoy that...
What do you think the secret of happiness is? Cash?
Arthur: No. For me, the secret of happiness today is to be on your show.

At this point, Ferguson had to pay him, so he offered Arthur a choice of a five-Euro note or a dollar. Arthur smilingly lied to Ferguson, telling him they were worth exactly the same, and pocketed the five-Euro note.

Comcast said it would cut off its own customers' access to the movies and other Web traffic unless Level 3 paid the fee, Level 3 said in a press release. The Comcast decision violates network neutrality principles that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved in 2005, Level 3 said. Comcast successfully challenged the FCC's enforcement of the net neutrality principles when, earlier this year, a U.S. appeals court threw out its ruling against the broadband provider slowing peer-to-peer traffic on its network. It's unclear why Comcast would seek to charge Level 3 for the activities of its own broadband customers.Level 3 announced Nov. 11 that it would be the primary delivery partner for streaming video service from Netflix. Comcast informed Level 3 on Nov. 19 that it would begin charging the backbone provider for transmitting online movies and other content to Comcast customers, Thomas Stortz, Level 3's chief legal officer, said in a statement. A week ago, "after being informed by Comcast that its demand for payment was 'take it or leave it,' Level 3 agreed to the terms, under protest, in order to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions," Stortz said in the statement. ...Comcast's efforts to collect recurring fees from Level 3 go "well beyond" filtering or prioritizing Web traffic, Stortz said. "With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast's subscribers at all, unless Comcast's unilaterally determined toll is paid -- even though Comcast's subscribers requested the content," he said. "With this action, Comcast demonstrates the risk of a 'closed' Internet, where a retail broadband Internet access provider decides whether and how their subscribers interact with content."

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, appeared on Hardball to defend against SPLC's "attack" (as he put it in a tweet) on FRC.

Perkins was so shameless in attempting to refute the well-supported assertion that FRC is a hate group demonizing gay people with disinformation that he brazenly cited a junk study (W. D. Erickson, “Behavior Patterns of Child Molesters,” Archives of Sexual Behavior 17 (1988): 83 -- see note 4 here).

Perkins went on to laud the American College of Pediatricians without bothering to mention that it is a right-wing sham replica (with a handful of voting members) of the mainstream 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Grinnell College president Raynard Kington
and his partner, Peter Daniolos, play with their children
(Christopher Gannon/The Des Moines Register)

The Des Moines Register reports that Grinnell College's board of trustees unanimously has chosen Raynard Kington, out of more than 200 candidates, to become the school's 13th president.

Kington has a medical degree, awarded to him at age 21, and a centuries-old vacation home in Crete. He used to be a director of the National Institutes of Health, where he allocated $10 billion of federal stimulus money.

His partner, Peter Daniolos, a child psychiatrist, joined the faculty at the University of Iowa and commutes to Iowa City a few times a week.

While preparing for the role, Carrey said he spoke to gay friends, read the writings of the activist Larry Kramer and watched “safe-sex instructional videos.” But he added that the central question remained, as it does with most of his parts: “What lie does the person believe about themselves? Even if it’s an absurd character, there’s a belief system.”

In Mr. Russell’s case Mr. Carrey attributed his behavior to “a severe case of abandonment.” (In the film Steven learns at a young age that he was adopted, and as an adult he’s rebuffed by his birth mother.) “That forms a grandiose personality,” Mr. Carrey said, “a need to constantly prove yourself.”

While the lawsuit focuses specifically on Strickland’s arrest and violations of his civil rights by two Miami Beach Police Officers, the lawsuit highlights two systemic issues that reach far beyond this case: the practices of unlawfully targeting gay men for arrest without probable cause and harassing and arresting people who observe, document, and/or report police misconduct.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

In the next few days well-funded right wing hate groups named by the SLPC will try to convince America that the SPLC has truly stepped off the curb.

It hasn't.

Its reports, as always, are impeccably researched and reasoned. I've provided links and urge anyone to click them for information straight from the horse's mouth, not through the filter of press release attacks by FRC, NOM, AFC, etc.

In its report "18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda,"the Southern Poverty Law Center listed specific reasons for its action, specifically noting "Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups."

It further explained that "Generally,the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling."

Example: the Family Research Council frequently cites the flawed research of Dr. Paul Cameron, who wrote this, in 2008:

“We can no longer rely — as almost all pro-family organizations do today — on gleaning scientific ‘bits’ from those in liberal academia… . [W]e must subvert the academy by doing original, honest research ourselves and use this to advance the historic Christian faith.”

There’s just one trouble with this approach. Almost all the “facts” trotted out by the religious right about gays turn out to be false or misleading. And no one does more to create these myths than Cameron, whose work has been repudiated by three scholarly associations. (Others who are commonly cited as “researchers” by the anti-gay right include Joe Dallas, John R. Diggs, Joseph Nicolosi and the late Charles Socarides.) In addition, many scholars who do serious work in the area of sexuality say their work is misused by anti-gay groups. In fact, at least 11 legitimate scientists have recorded video statements saying their work was being mischaracterized by the religious right.

"...In all likelihood ...violence, hatred and bullying of those perceived as homosexual will continue into the foreseeable future. Although leaders of the hard core of the religious right deny it, it seems clear that their demonizing propaganda plays a role in fomenting that violence — a proposition that has sparked a number of Christian leaders to speak out in the wake of the latest series of tragedies."

FRC's bombastic and misleading press release, issued after it learned it had been classified as a hate group by the SPLC:

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement in response to slanderous attacks made by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"Family Research Council has, for nearly 30 years, advanced faith, family, and freedom in public discourse. We do so with civility and compassion. We hold to the indisputable fact that the family - a Dad, a Mom, and children - is the best building block of a good society, which is why we oppose efforts to transform it based on personal sexual preference.

"The Southern Poverty Law Center is a massively funded liberal organization that operates under a veneer of public justice when, in fact, they seem more interested in fundraising ploys than fighting wrongdoing.

"This is a deliberately timed smear campaign by the SPLC. The Left is losing the debate over ideas and the direction of public policy so all that is left for them is character assassination. It's a sad day in America when we can not, with integrity, have a legitimate discussion over policy issues that are being considered by Congress, legislatures, and the courts without resorting to juvenile tactics of name calling.

"The Left's smear campaigns of conservatives is also being driven by the clear evidence that the American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state, currently more than thirty, that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of marriage has done so. Earlier this month, voters in Iowa sent a powerful message when they removed three Supreme Court justices who imposed same-sex marriage on the state. Would the SPLC also smear the good people of Iowa?

"Family Research Council will continue to champion marriage and family as the foundation of our society and will not acquiesce to those seeking to silence the Judeo-Christian views held by millions of Americans. We call on the Southern Poverty Law Center to apologize for this slanderous attack and attempted character assassination."

In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican State Rep. Louis “Woody” Jenkins of Louisiana, Perkins paid $82,500 to use the mailing list of former Klan chieftain David Duke. The campaign was fined $3,000 (reduced from $82,500) after Perkins and Jenkins filed false disclosure forms in a bid to hide the link to Duke. Five years later, on May 17, 2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” Perkins claimed not to know the group’s ideology at the time, but it had been widely publicized in Louisiana and the nation. In 1999, in fact, GOP chairman Jim Nicholson urged Republicans to quit the group over its “racist views.” A short time later, after an Intelligence Report exposé but before Perkins’ 2001 speech, Republican House Speaker Trent Lott was embroiled in a national scandal over his ties to the group.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Not all the televised sexual assaults occurred at airports last weekend. Here's a snarky Michigan video put-down of Texas A&M which welcomes Nebraska to the Big Ten Conference where "We leave your junk alone." The video shows Texas A&M linebacker Tony Jerod-Eddie getting way too up-close-and-personal — until Nebraska tight end Ben Cotton started kicking at him, for which Cotton was flagged for a personal foul and unsportsmanlike conduct.

Tight End Ben Cotton (NebraskaStatePaper.com)

"I don't have time to look at YouTubes and what not, but I heard something about it, I asked the player about it, and he said there was some extracurricular activity on the pile, and I said 'That's not what we're about, that's not what we coached you to do,' and he agreed," Aggies coach Mike Sherman said. "He's really remorseful about it, and I said I don't want to see it again. The results and the consequences of that are between me and that player. It's been addressed."

Except for the one-sided penalty against Nebraska. (One of several.)

This game engendered a lot of Internet comments similar to the three below.

Bartman67
Texas Penal code 22.01 Assault:﻿ (3) intentionally or knowingly causes physical contact with another when the person knows or should reasonably believe that the other will regard the contact as offensive or provocative. or when he just wont give up the ball.

jneary56
@cbt711 Are you kidding? I am not a Nebraska fan. But I was rooting for﻿ them after this dirty play. I have an HD receiver. We watched it a couple times. If #83 was going for the ball his entire arm would be hidden from view. Only his hand is hidden. He is either grabbing Cotton's inner thigh or his scotum.

rjhegedus
Quote from Eagles Linebacker Ike Reese: "When we played the Patriots last year [Eagles running back] Brian Westbrook fumbled a punt, and we were all down there scrambling for it. [Patriots linebacker] Mike Vrabel had my﻿ testicles in his hand, and he was squeezing them. Where the football ends up depends on who has the strongest will or the strongest hands. Guys reach inside the face mask to gouge your eyes. But the biggest thing is the grabbing of the testicles. It is crazy."

Craig Ferguson discovers that a French talk show is totally ripping him off. For real. Including almost a frame-by-frame duplication of The Late Late Show's title sequence, as well as the puppet skit. Ferguson was hot, not just about the theft, but of the fact that the rip-off has better music and lighting. "You can't steal from us... we don't [expletive deleted] HAVE anything!."

Susan Szaleski of the Omaha World-Herald reports that a former Omaha priest, Rev. John M. Fiala, has been charged for attempting to negotiate with a Garland, Texas neighbor, the murder of an 18-year-old boy whom the 52-year-old priest was accused of sexually assaulting at gunpoint in a hotel room and during private catechism in 2007 and 2008.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Warren Buffett, the third richest person on earth in 2010, told Christiane Amanpour on ABC's This Week that the wealthy have never had it so good.

"I think that people at the high end, people like myself, should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it," he said Sunday.

"The rich are always going to say that, you know, 'Just give us more money, and we'll go out and spend more, and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you.' But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on."

According to Wikipedia, in 1999, a survey by the Carson Group named Buffett the top money manager of the twentieth century, ahead of Peter Lynch and John Templeton.

In 2007, he was listed among Time's 100 Most Influential People in the world.

Les Blumenthal of McClatchy Newspapers reports that Columbia River Bar pilots are confirming what marine scientists have just started talking about: Ocean waves are becoming bigger and more powerful, and climate change could be the cause.

...Using buoy data and models based on wind patterns, scientists say that the waves off the coast of the Pacific Northwest and along the Atlantic seaboard from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Cape Hatteras, N.C., are steadily increasing in size.

...Similar increases in wave height have been noticed in the North Atlantic off England.

...Unclear is whether the number and height of "rogue" waves beyond the continental shelf have increased.

According to some estimates, two merchant ships a month disappear without a trace, thought to be victims of rogue waves.

Photographer Jeff Sheng's newest project, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, was spurred, he said in an email to NPR, by service members who had played sports in high school and/or college and had seen his earlier project, Fearless.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is an exhibit of about 60 portraits Sheng has taken in 25 states.

Columnist Leonard Pitts had the following to say about the photographs in a recent column:

Look at these pictures. Look at what isn't there, at what the images withhold. You see the figures. But always, a hand is raised, a shadow intervenes, a head is turned, the top of the body is cropped away, and you are denied what you instinctively seek: identity. You are denied their faces. What's going on here? Don't ask, don't tell.

I remember an early morning at Hamburger Mary's in San Francisco in which, for the first and last time of my life, I was able to use the seven years of French I took, when a Swedish guy (who, by the looks of things, had really been through the wringer, if you catch my drift, at one or more of the wilder establishments south of Market) and who didn't speak English, figured he'd have more luck finding a French speaker than a Swedish one, and asked me to order "des frites" for him. Which I was more than happy to do, not wishing to standing between a Scandinavian boy and his fries.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

The Iowa Family Policy Center's annual fundraiser will be held today, Sunday, November 21 from 2 pm - 5 pm at the First Federated Church, 4801 Franklin Ave., Des Moines, Iowa. No childcare will be available. How do we know this? BECAUSE IT SAYS SO ABOVE THE "MAP TO EVENT" BUTTON, STUPID!

The bait will be speaker Mike Huckabee. At the event (catered by the Machine Shed!), a new umbrella organization is to be introduced, to be headed by Bob Vander Plaats: The Family Leader, which will incorporate the IFPC, its PAC and Marriage Matters, a program which used to be federally funded.

The Iowa Independent website notes that, despite sharing a name, numerous connections and an anti-gay marriage agenda, Iowa Family Policy Center President Chuck Hurley says the new incarnation of his organization — The Family Leader — has no affiliation whatsoever to a national group with the same name and apparent ties to the Mormon church.

On Friday, during an appearance on The Late Show to promote "I love you, Phillip Morris," Jim Carrey finally had enough with Letterman's 50s frat boy attitudes toward gay people, prompting the following exchange, which starts at 4:47 in the video above.

Dave: And, in terms of a leading man, a heterosexual playing a homosexual, do homosexuals say "well, that shouldn't have been a homosexual" or do you worry about your image as a heterosexual leading man playing a homosexual?

Jim Carrey: Boy, we haven't grown at all, have we? We haven't grown at all. [To cackles from Paul Schaffer.] We're still children in the schoolyard. Honestly. No offense Dave, for god's sakes, have you ever seen a gay man? Are there gay people in Indiana? Is it ok to be gay there, is what I'm asking. There's not a policy against gay people there or here?

Friday, November 19, 2010

WGN's anchors were not happy that the implosion of a bridge they had trained a live camera on for several minutes happened as soon as they briefly cut away to another shot.
The upside of the fiasco is that the adorable male anchor shows he can spit [paper wads] as adroitly as a major league baseball player. Said anchor, Larry Potash, has quite a following in gay Chicago. Though straight, he is said to be a good sport whenever WGN reads emails on the air from males requesting that he anchor shirtless.

The Iowa Independent's Andy Koposa reports that despite sharing a name, numerous connections and an anti-gay marriage agenda, Iowa Family Policy Center President Chuck Hurley says the new incarnation of his organization — The Family Leader — has no affiliation whatsoever to a national group with the same name and apparent ties to the Mormon church.

6. François Sagat

If you haven't heard of François Sagat, you should probably start watching a lot more gay porn. Since the 31-year-old Frenchman began appearing in American adult films about five years ago, he's emerged as a fascinating, enigmatic figure unlike the cookie-cutter beefcake most of us associate with the adult industry. Yes, the man does have an extraordinary body -- with a massive chest and arms that could easily crush a "Glee" cast member. He also has one of the most perfect rear ends in the history of rear ends. But rest assured, François Sagat is not your father's gay porn star.

A former skinny, shy fashion student who decided to bulk up after he saw an unflattering image of himself in a friend's movie, Sagat has become something of a cult figure in France...

Citing national-security concerns, the TSA will not point to any specific cases in which a screener stopped a would-be terrorist at a checkpoint. Nonaffiliated security experts, such as Bruce Schneier (who coined the term "security theater") argue that that's because this has never happened. It's true the TSA doesn't make a habit of keeping success stories a secret. In April 2008, the TSA touted the arrest of U.S. Army veteran Kevin Brown at Orlando International Airport as a victory for its behavioral detection program. Brown was arrested after trying to check luggage containing pipe-bomb-making materials. Airline officials insisted passengers were never in danger, since Brown didn't intend to assemble the bomb on the plane. Moreover, he did not have ties to organized terrorism, and it's not apparent what he wanted to do with the hazardous materials after arriving at his destination. Brown fits into the category of troublemakers that Schneier says the TSA does catch: random nut jobs.

Born November 15, 1932, Petula Clark has had at least four careers: child star with radio program, sultry 50s singer, Pop/Rock 60s icon, movie/stage star. Certainly not as talented as fellow Brits Dusty Springfield or Cleo Laine or Shirley Bassey, she nevertheless became a bigger star than all of them, thanks in no small part to the shrewd management of her French husband with whom she lives in Switzerland.

Trivia from WikiPedia and elsewhere: She's the only pop singer to have scored a #1 hit with a song written by Charlie Chaplin— This is my song — written by him for his 60s film "A Countess From Hong Kong." Chaplin so badly wanted Al Jolson to sing the song that he had to be shown a picture of Jolson's 1950 tombstone before he abandoned the idea and had a copy sent to Petula Clark's husband/manager Claud Wolf, who, unlike Clark's regular collaborator Tony Hatch, liked the song.

After Hatch refused Wolf's invitation to arrange it for Clark to record; ultimately Ernie Freeman arranged the song and Sonny Burke produced the session - at Western Studios in Los Angeles - in which Clark recorded the song not only in English but in French as "C'est Ma Chanson" (lyrics by Pierre Delanoë who also felt the song a poor choice for Clark), German as "Love, So Heisst Mein Song" (lyrics by Joachim Relin) and Italian as "Cara Felicita" - lyrics by Ciro Bertini).

In fact Clark did not wish to record the song in English as she disliked the deliberately old fashioned lyrics which Chaplin refused to modify; however after the translated versions of the song had been recorded there happened to be some time remaining on the session which Burke coaxed Clark to use to record Chaplin's lyrics. The recording session featured the backing of the Wrecking Crew.

In 1968, NBC-TV invited Clark to host her own special in the U.S., and in doing so she inadvertently made television history. While singing a duet of "On the Path of Glory," an anti-war song that she had composed, with guest Harry Belafonte, she took hold of his arm, to the dismay of a representative from the Chrysler Corporation, the show's sponsor, who feared that the moment would incur the racist bigotry of Southern viewers. When he insisted that they substitute a different take, with Clark and Belafonte standing well away from one another, Clark and her husband Wolff the producer of the show refused, destroyed all other takes of the song and delivered the finished program to NBC with the touch intact. The program aired on 8 April 1968, with high ratings and critical acclaim.[12] (To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the original telecast, Clark and her husband who had served as executive producer of the show, appeared at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan on 22 September 2008, to discuss the broadcast and its impact, following a broadcast of the program.[13])

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Intrepid reporter Bunny Vanderbilt Anderson Cooper lets nothing get in the way of the pursuit of ratings important stories. I think he should dress up like this every time he announces one of his hard-hitting "Keeping Them Honest" segments.

The Washington Blade's Lou Chibbaro, Jr. reports that the National Coalition of American Nuns has compared the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to "blinded Pharisees" for reiterating its opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage at its annual meeting in Baltimore this week while remaining silent on anti-gay bullying and gay teen suicide.

...“More than a month has gone by since the media broke the news about a series of gay suicides,” the nuns’ statement says. “During that time, the U.S. Catholic Bishops failed to make a single statement regarding these tragic, preventable deaths.”

...In a separate statement, the LGBT-supportive group Catholics for Equality expressed concern that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops broke a long-standing tradition this week by not electing its current vice president, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., as the new president.

Kicanas, who Catholics for Equality describes as a “social justice champion,” was bypassed for the president’s position when the Conference of Bishops elected instead Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage equality and LGBT rights, according to Catholics for Equality.

The group noted that the bishops’ conference elected Archbishop Kurtz, the head of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, as its new vice president.

“Archbishop Kurtz … has led the Catholic hierarchy’s national campaign to deny marriage and family rights to gay and lesbian citizens,” Catholics for Equality said in a statement released Wednesday.

“That campaign has been financially assisted by the national office of the Knights of Columbus, most recently through the production of videos that demean and discredit gay and lesbian relationship, as well as single parent and extended family households,” the statement said.

MTV’s LGBT Network, Logo's mere nomination of Tel-Aviv for gay ‘sexiest city’ and ‘year breakthrough’ was denounced by a Tel-Aviv-based queer group, Israeli Queers for Palestine, which argued that MTV’s choice of Tel-Aviv sends a normalizing message to the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, particularly in light of a Palestinian queer and general calls for a boycott of Israel.

Israel actively pursues gay tourism, as illustrated by the following, confusingly-edited television commercial produced by the Israel Ministry of Tourism.

"We’ve reached a new phase of all this where the politics of personal destruction aimed at me by the Left have now made people afraid to have personal relationships with me…and this is seriously doing a real number to me. It hurts my heart and damn near kills my soul. All because I voice a political opinion that threatens the Left…and strangely carries enough weight for me to become a worthy target for what appears to be the Romney campaign, the White House, George Soros, and other nuts." - Homocon Hillbuzz founder Kevin DuJan, who says that yet another 25 year-old twink won't date him because he loves Jeebus and Sarah Palin. Also: Obama/Soros/Romney/Xenu want to kill him. Or something!

If you're not reading Hillbuzz, you totally should. It's conspiracy theories, bald racism, homocon nonsensery, and Limbaugh/Beck fanaticism all wrapped up in a giant ball of whackadoodle. It makes Gay Patriot seem like a warm place of reason. And that's saying something.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

TMZ.com is reporting a Willow and Bristol Palin facebook war with ex-schoolmates.
One, a boy named Tre, wrote, "Sarah Palin's Alaska, is failing so hard right now."
Willow replied on the boy's wall, "Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I've seen pictures of, your disgusting ... My sister had a kid and is still hot."
Willow followed up that comment with another that read, "Tre stfu. Your such a f**got."
Bristol Palin piled on with a message to Tre saying, "You're running your mouth just to talk sh*t."
Later, Willow posted another message that read, "Sorry that you guys are all jealous of my families success and you guys aren't goin to go anywhere with your lives."

Wired.com reports that in late 2008, Lockheed Martin paid $18 million to equip a Gulfstream III with an array of sensors and cameras, making it able to shoot video of suspicious activities below and beam it rapidly to a ground station for analysis and early-warning.

Lockheed’s still looking for an American buyer for the plane. ...Whether the U.S. military will opt to purchase it is uncertain. As the Washington Times reported last week, some senior commanders have recently complained that they’re capturing more footage of insurgents than analysts can possibly interpret. Maybe it’s time to reinstall the wetbar.

Sasha Aslanian of Minnesota Public Radio reports that the student newspaper of Benilde-St. Margaret's in St. Louis Park, Minn. deleted two student editorials over the weekend and shut off the online comments the Knight Errant student newspaper published in a news story last Thursday about the bishops' "Preserving Marriage in Minnesota" DVD.

But the op-ed that touched off the cyberstorm was editor Sean Simonson's piece, "Life as a gay teenager." Benilde-St. Margaret's principal Sue Skinner called Simonson's parents a day after the piece ran, and also talked to Simonson. School administrators declined to be interviewed for this story, but Simonson said the principal wanted the newspaper to stop taking comments on the piece. Simonson disagreed. "The piece was sort of to create this dialogue," said Simonson. "And if we just stopped accepting comments, we destroyed the meaning of the story and so it wasn't really worth doing." Knight Errant staff, together with their faculty advisor, agreed instead to remove the two op-eds and the comments from the website, and post this explanation from the principal. "While lively debate and discussion clearly has its place in a Catholic school, this particular discussion is not appropriate because the level of intensity has created an unsafe environment for students. As importantly, the articles and ensuing online postings have created confusion about Church teaching," the statement read in part. ..."I think it's always regrettable when a school administrator decides that the appropriate way to handle controversy is to suppress it," said Jane Kirtley, a professor of law and media ethics at the University of Minnesota. ...The editors say what they regret about taking down the articles is that it appears the commentators calling for their censorship have won.

Edge New England reports that the nation’s first comprehensive survey of LGBT students, faculty and staff at America’s colleges campuses was released Sept. 23 at a briefing hosted by openly gay members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

Relatively few colleges and universities have policies that ban discrimination against LGBT students and employees. Less than 8 percent have such policies in place. The 2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People reports on the experiences of nearly 6,000 students, faculty, staff and administrators in all 50 states. It shows significant harassment of students and a lack of safety and inclusiveness, even among those supposedly "welcoming" institutions.

According to the TSA — and of course other agencies — images from the scanners are “automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer.” Whatever the stated policy, it’s clear that it is trivial for operators to save images and remove them for distribution if they choose not to follow guidelines or that other employees could remove images that are inappropriately if accidentally stored.

Past public statements made by the Transportation Security Administration, have given the impression that full-body airport scanners don't have the ability to store and transmit images. EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center) has shown that to be a lie.

In the mean time, wired.com reports that the TSA has launched an investigation of a passenger in San Diego who left the airport after opting out of an invasive body scan and criticizing the proposed alternative pat-down.
John Tyner, a 31-year-old software programmer, recorded the encounter with TSA on his mobile phone and posted it to his blog.
TSA has responded by telling local reporters that it’s now investigating the passenger, who may face an $11,000 fine if the agency decides to sue him.

“There was a certain percentage of people who were willingly going through the scanner,” Tyner told Threat Level. “Then, every time the scanner was empty, they would just grab the next person in the line for the metal detector and send them through the scanner.” Due to privacy and health concerns, Tyner opted out of the scan in favor of a pat-down. But when the TSA agent explained in detail the agency’s new policy for “enhanced” pat-downs — which includes using the front of hands and fingers to touch passengers in their groin — Tyner balked. “If you touch my junk,” he told the agent, “I’ll have you arrested.” The agent called his supervisor, who told Tyner that if he wasn’t comfortable with the enhanced pat-down “we can escort you back out and you don’t have to fly today.” Tyner told the agent, “I don’t understand how a sexual assault can be made a condition of my flying.” When the agent replied that a pat-down was not considered a sexual assault, Tyner said, “It would be if you were not the government.” ...“We want to be sure that everyone on a plane can be assured that the people with them received the same screening process,” Michael Aguilar, the TSA’s security director in San Diego, told reporters, despite the fact that screening actually varies greatly among passengers, some of whom are allowed to pass through metal detectors without a pat-down or scan. ...Kate Hanni, founding director of FlyersRights.org, said that her organization’s hotline has “been blown up with calls complaining about the scans and pat-downs.” Members with the 30,000-strong organization expressed concerns about health risks and about whether the TSA conducts background checks on agents to screen pedophiles out of the agency.

Last Saturday, longtime Village Voice columnist and sometime Countdown commentator Michael Musto helped choose Eddie Rabbon, from Columbia, South Carolina winner of "US Mr. Gay" in Philadelphia. Rabbon "was slick and dimpled, but we also loved the young and genial Mr. New Brunswick, the strikingly swarthy Mr. Rehoboth Beach, and...oh, heck, we loved them all."

I love judging. I judge for a living. When anyone gives me a chance to give thumbs up or down, I relish it. It’s so wonderful to sit back and not be particularly good looking or witty and force other people to subscribe to those standards. I also think it’s amusing to subvert the idea of a pageant. It’s an ironic twist on a traditional pageant… and what Carrie Prejean would not be able to pull off.

As a judge, what are you looking for in the next Mr. Gay USA?

Somebody with some hometown pride, but who is capable of representing the whole country. I’m not looking for someone generic or your typical run-of-the-mill muscle gay. He should be funny, and serious enough to take on the incredible responsibility that goes along with this title.

Mr. Jon Ireland, 27, of Wood Green, was one of the winners of the free subway "Metro" newspaper’s Win The Cover competition, in which the winner gets the cover to do wish as s/he pleases. So Jon decided to surprise his partner of almost five years, 23-year-old Ben Collins.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Gov. Chet Culver said Monday that if given the opportunity he will appoint Iowa’s three Supreme Court justice vacancies before Republican Terry Branstad takes office on Jan. 14.

Jayson Clayworth, reporter for the Des Moines Register has reported in his blog, Iowa Politics Insider, that Iowa's outgoing Democratic governor, Chet Culver, who lost to former Republican governor Terry Branstad, will appoint replacements for the three Iowa Supreme Court judges ousted in an anti-gay-marriage campaign.

A nonpartisan panel will send finalists to the governor for selection and that process could be completed before Jan. 14th.

“They decide the timeline, they decide the names they send and we don’t know what that timeline will look like, but if they send those names to me I will exercise my duties as governor as I am required to do,” said Culver in an interview with the Associated Press.

Culver, who supports marriage rights for same-sex couples, previously has told reporters after the Nov. 2 election that he didn’t know how or if he would act on the judge reappointment issue. His statements Monday were the clearest to date of his intentions.

The window in which Culver might have the opportunity to appoint the judges is slim. The vetting process could not begin until Nov. 29 at the earliest, when the results of Tuesday’s retention election are certified.

Then the merit selection commission that interviews statewide judicial candidates and sends them to the governor has to allow time for judges and lawyers to apply. That’s usually a month.

The commission then has 60 days to select three nominees for the governor. The governor then has 30 days to fill the bench.

“Logistically it’s certainly possible that it could move by Jan. 14,” said former Iowa Supreme Court Justice Mark McCormick, who is also a former member of the commission. “It’s a chance. Whether in fact it will move that fast, it’s really up to the commission itself.”

...A message late Monday afternoon for Iowa judicial branch Administrator David Boyd was not returned.

“Complaints be damned. If he wants to do it and if the names are forwarded to him while he’s still governor, there’s nothing Branstad or anyone else can do,” said Arthur Sanders, a political science professor at Drake University.

...Gov.-elect Branstad has publicly urged Culver not to appoint sucessors to Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices Michael Streit and David Baker.

In a profile of Brian Brown, Newsweek notes that Brian Brown has just moved the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) offices to lobbyist row, on Washington's "K" Street and is in the process of lauching ActRight.com, a hub for conservative activism and fundraising.

Brown, 36, has been able to funnel $5 million of NOM's money into 100 races in the recent midterm elections. About $600,000 of that was recently spent in Iowa in a successful campaign to remove 42% of the Iowa Supreme Court.

“He (Brown) is the perfect president because he’s the Oxford-trained Catholic who can spin, spin, spin,” says Arisha Hatch of the Courage Campaign.

Although Brian Brown and his predecessor, Maggie Gallagher are Catholic, the group was organizated by powerful Mormons and is almost certainly an LDS front group. The website of the New Hampshire Democratic Party summarized NOM's evasion and/or violation of campaign finance disclosure regulation in several states:

The State of Maine's Ethics Commission is Investigating NOM for Not Revealing Its Donors According to State Law. The Portland Press Herald reports, "The state ethics commission voted 3-2 today to order an investigation of the fundraising efforts by the National Organization of Marriage, a Washington, D.C.,-based organization that has given money to fight same-sex marriage in Maine. Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate filed a complaint with the commission saying the group should be required to disclose the names of donors. In response, Brian Brown, executive director of NOM, said they have not raised money specifically for Maine and therefore are not required to report individual donors." [Portland Press Herald,10/1/09]

NOM Went to Federal Court to Try and Block the Release of Donor Information in Maine. The No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign released the following information on NOM's latest court actions, "The NO on 1 campaign called on the Question 1 campaign to stop changing the subject and focus instead on its issues of lopsided funding by a national organization intent on hiding its donor base from the voting public. In fact, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the number one donor to the Yes campaign is in court today to stop any donor disclosure...According to Maine campaign finance reports, the Yes campaign has received more than $1.55M from the National Organization for Marriage which is essentially financing that campaign. Today, NOM is in federal court seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Maine campaign officials from asking them to reveal its individual contributors." [No on 1/Protect Maine Equality Press Release, 10/26/09]

NOM is Also Suing the State of California to Try to Stop an Investigation into Its Funding of Proposition 8. According to Danielle Truszkosky, "In California, NOM lodged a lawsuit against the secretary of state, the attorney general and the five commissioners of the California Fair Political Practices Commission for allowing an investigation into the group. NOM has also initiated litigation in California that attempts to remove all disclosure of contributors to political initiatives and campaigns. Rather than comply with state and federal regulations, it seems NOM and its backers prefer to use their massive war chest to conceal records and intimidate the officials who seek to protect the citizens they represent." [South Florida Blade, 10/22/09]

Iowa is Also Investigating NOM's Participation in a 2009 Iowa Special Election. According to 365Gay.com, "Two civil rights groups in Iowa filed a letter with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board Mon., Aug. 31, requesting an investigation into the National Organization for Marriage (NOM)... On Aug. 20, NOM filed a report with the Disclosure Board indicating it had spent $86,060 in the campaign to fill a vacant seat in the state House. But the report did not report where the money came from." [365Gay.com, 9/8/09]

...His Web site has found a modest audience of race fans, gay and straight. He said the site had averaged about 2,000 unique visitors a month. “Nascar has more fans who are accepting of me being gay than gays have been accepting of me being a Nascar fan,” Myers said in a recent telephone interview. ...Queers4Gears is not the only car Web site for gay men and lesbians, but it seems to be carrying the most momentum. Myers’s tongue-in-cheek “gaynalyses” of each race refers to drivers as divas and leans hard on the soap-opera-style drama of the sport. But he also writes standard recaps of every Sprint Cup race. ...He has drawn notice from the mainstream news media, and his Queers4Gears Twitter account has more than 1,300 followers. But two accounts that Myers set up anonymously each have more followers. When Kyle Busch, a tempestuous 25-year-old Sprint Cup driver, talked early in the season about softening his abrasive personality, Myers created @oldkylebusch and @newkylebusch on Twitter to poke fun at Busch. On Halloween, @oldkylebusch posted: “No KyBu Pumpkin this year. I was trying to carve it when it bumped me — so I smashed it into the wall.” Myers was found to be the author of the posts, and Queers4Gears drew more attention.

UPDATE: Myer's twitter account reveals that Ann Coulter apparently has beaten GOProud to a shoutout to Myers' readers. You know Ann Coulter... the one who shuts down progressive gay critics by tweeting "I block pederasts" Yeah, that one. But you can't blame the girl for trying to corral a new demographic outbreak of gullible gay conservatives before Sarah Palin does.

The New York Times revealed that three of the biggest online data exchanges, BlueKai, Bizo and Rapleaf will let you see what they think you like and let you delete that information. They also let you opt out of getting “interest-based” ads altogether. The Times article provided a link to BlueKai. I looked up the other two and created links to them as well. You're welcome.

Leave an (anonymous) comment after you do this, telling what you found (in general terms, of course.) Were you surprised?

If they don't have any or much data on you, tell us what privacy plugins/software or techniques you use. Thank you.

Crackpot Paul Cameron's newest bombast is dissected by Alvin McEwan over at Pam's House Blend. Cameron was kicked out of the American Psychological Association in December of 1983 for failing to cooperate with its investigation of him. Cameron claims he resigned in March of 1982.

Not until 1984 did the Nebraska Psychological Association disassociate itself from his work.

Undoubtedly the Nebraska Psychological Association could have reacted sooner, but was probably distracted by the tribulations of the University of Nebraska's most celebrated psychologist, Dr. Tom Osborne, whose statistical success in 1984 was overcome by Oklahoma via four painful turnovers as Oklahoma ended Nebraska's 27-game conference win streak and 21-game win streak in Lincoln.

Although the run-oriented Huskers outpassed the Sooners 236-58, two key second-half stops by the Sooners shut down Nebraska's hopes for a shot at the National Championship.

Dirk Wewers, a curator at the Allwetter Zoo in Muenster, Germany is breaking up the happy loft of a same sex vulture couple, because the boys are apparently too messy and because a female vulture at a Czech zoo needs to be impregnated.
The male couple were "poor homemakers" said a zoo spokeswoman/
wrecker of a gay home, who obviously could write her own ticket in a job with Child Protective Services in Utah or Mike Huckabee.Disclaimer: no photo accompanying this piece depicts anyone considered to be a vulture gay.

So Queerty.com cribs from BlindGossip.com a movie-star-and-his-beard item about the Couple That Isn't Really A Couple, noting "...he won't say no to anything that diverts from rumors about him being gay (even though he is looking for a new boyfriend right now)."

Then Queerty runs the cropped picture of Jake Gyllenhaal you see here instead of the completely different photo run in the BlindGossip item they totally stole cited.

But hey, don't get the wrong idea, because there's a disclaimer: "(Note: Accompanying photos do not indicate any relationship to the report.)"

Saturday, November 13, 2010

In a story about rising farm belt land prices, the Wall Street Journal notes that China will likely buy a third of all soybeans just harvested in the U.S.'s record export crop. And U.S. cotton exports are expected to climb 31%, which may drain supplies by next summer to the lowest level since 1925, according to USDA projections, due to strong demand by Chinese textile mills.

Glover: One of the issues that was dealt with in the last election was gay marriage and you used your position during the last session of the legislature to block debate on whether a resolution ought to go to voters to vote on writing a ban on gay marriage in the state's constitution. Will that be your strategy again this year given the narrower majority?

Gronstal: I don't think I've really wavered on this subject. I have said it kind of from start to finish on this whole discussion. I'm not going to put discrimination into the constitution of the state of Iowa.

Henderson: The senate republican leader, the recently re-elected senate republican leader Paul McKinley said this past week that it lays at your feet the defeat of the three justices because you took that position and did not allow the wheels to be set in motion for a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment. Do you bear responsibility for the defeat of those three justices who were up for retention?

Gronstal: I bear the responsibility of saying I'm not going to move forward with putting discrimination in the constitution of the state of Iowa. Everybody else can do whatever it is they need to do. I feel very strongly on that. So, I'm not inclined to move forward on a constitutional amendment that will put -- not my job. I voted for the judges. The people of Iowa have that right every year to vote judges up or down. That is their choice.

Henderson: Has the landscape of judicial retention elections been forever changed?

Gronstal: It's hard to tell, it's hard to tell. Look, you had a national group come into this state with over a million dollars to run a campaign against judges in this state. That certainly had some impact, I don't know whether that is going to come back in two years or not. We'll have to wait and see.

Borg: One thing that is being contemplated and that has been criticized in this whole process is the nominating commission -- the entire selection process. As you look at it and as you have reviewed it now in light of losing three justices and the fact that they're going to have to be replaced, should the nominating, the way that they are nominated be changed, the selection process?

Gronstal: I don't believe the selection process should be changed. I'm certainly willing to look at that but I can remember democrats in the 80s when Terry Branstad was governor and when we had had republican governors for decades in this state I remember democrats complaining that the judicial nominating system was biased in favor of republicans and only republican names got advanced for judgeships. So, I remember the same criticism from the other side. Here is what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says, they say we have one of the best systems of courts in the country. We have competent judges in charge, not influenced by political pressures and that that is good. They rate our state very highly from a business perspective as to our courts. That is -- I think we have been well served by the current system.

Henderson: What is your advice to the four justices who remain? Bob Vander Plaats, the spokesperson for the group which led the campaign to oust the three justices, has suggested at the end of this week that the four who remain should resign. Would your advice be to them to become politicians, to start raising money for retention elections in the future and campaign actively for retention?

Gronstal: First of all, I do think there will be an effort in coming years to provide greater support for judges in the tough decisions that they have to make and to not politicize those decisions. So, I think some level of increased political activity on the side of retaining judges is likely to happen. But let me say this, I'm not going to give a lot of advice to the judicial branch. They know what they can do. They know what is within their purview. They don't give me a lot of advice as to how to find 26 votes in the Iowa Senate, I'm not going to give them a lot of advice on how to do their jobs. They are a separate, co-equal branch of government.

Glover: Tell me a little bit about what you think voters were saying when they tossed those judges out? Were they voting on the issue? Was it just an angry electorate that was just mad at the court system? It struck me that towards the end of that campaign most of the ads were not about same-sex marriage, most of the ads were about activist judges.

Gronstal: I think it is hard to read what the public at large was saying about that and I think there will be people that will evaluate that. It looks like there were significantly more people that voted in the judge's race this time than last time and that is not really surprising when a group from Mississippi comes into your state and pours in a million bucks. That is going to have some impact in that world. So, the question is whether the effort on that side of anti-judges is going to be sustained for the future, whether they are going to continue that track or other tracks.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Gabby: "Use the back door!"
Lee: "I always do."
(Gabby's eye's flit from side to side, doing the math of Bob and Lee's relationship. LOL)

Later in this episode, Gabby realizes, after a frank talk with Bob, that he wasn't out to seduce her husband; he was just bored without Lee and wanted some semblance of a social life, so she gave him permission for a golf sleepover weekend with Carlos, albeit with some wickedly pithy advice:

Gabby: Oh, and if you ever do feel the need to flip a straight guy in the lane? I'd start with Tom Scavo. I always thought he was three drinks away...
Bob: Two!

(Desperate Housewives should offer writing and acting internships to the amateurs who make Glee.)

PostScript to Gabby: Carlos DID have a gay past — not on Desperate Housewives, but on Six Feet Under.)

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.